DIY Hot Wheels Organization

Needed for this project:

Shoe Rack from Amazon or something similar

*Each rack came with 4 shelves. You need to double them up, so each rack would make two complete hotwheels shelves (100ish cars). I purchased 3 racks, giving me 12 shelves and 6 hotwheels shelves when doubled up (400ish cars)

Spray 6 cans of spray paint (This is optional. You could certainly leave the pine unfinished and this would shave at least 2 days off of your project time, but I chose to paint mine satin white)

24- 2" screws

Wood Glue

Tape Measure and Leveler

220 Grit Sand paper (optional)

Project Cost: $67.18 ($25.48 for 6 cans of spray paint and 3 shelving units at $13.90 each) 

Total time invested: 2 days total (1 hour of intermittent spraying + overnight drying time and 45 minutes of family time measuring and screwing into the wall) 

Storage for 400+ mini cars!

We are in the middle of transitioning our 9yo into his "older room" and with that comes the conversion of our junk room, aka 4th bedroom where we threw things to be out of sight, into a new and organized hangout room. My goal in doing this is to hopefully then convert my sunroom from a playroom into an adult(ish) room. You can read more about the sunroom here.

So, if you're a Boy Mom like I am, you are probably swimming tiny cars. To be more specific...hot wheels, matchbox, or any small scale die cast car, and one of the issues at hand is how to organize the over abundance of hot wheels in the new hangout room.

I have scoured the internet for ideas, and came across several...magnetic strips, metal flashing, shelving, etc. but could never get behind these ideas. Mostly because they all hinged on the cars being magnetic and it was still a kind of disheveled way or organizing being just thrown up on the wall. I came across another DIYer who mentioned using the shelves from a shoe storage rack and this was an idea I could get behind. So, I ordered this Shoe Rack from Amazon and then picked up some white spray paint from Home Depot.  

I started by unboxing the racks. They do not come put together (which is perfect for my project), so I just laid them out face down to begin spraying. I chose the side where the staples are exposed as "The Back" and laid the racks out with "The Back" - up, so that the front would be the last thing I sprayed. Looking back, I should have sprayed "The front" first because the spray bled a bit onto the front, which took a bit of extra attention and time. If I had done the reverse, it would've bled onto the back and wouldn't have been an issue.

Follow the steps below to turn

                   this...                 ...into this!

I picked up 6 cans of Satin white spray paint from Home Depot. This was not necessary, as the shelves could've been hung unfinished. 

Also, if you have one of these I would use it! The slats were no joke. I used an unusually large amount of spray paint quickly because I was using the ole spray everything method, then I realized that I needed to slow down and do each slat one at a time and from all 4 angles. Needless to say, my fingers were tired, but this little guy helped tremendously.

Here they are laid out to dry. I will flip later and finish them off with another coat of paint.

After flipping and applying a second coat of paint + dry time overnight, we were ready to hang.
*I did a light sand with 220 Grit sand paper (this was not necessary, but I couldn't stop myself-this added another 15 minutes to the project)

Measure you wall and decide where you're hanging. Mark lines according to level.
* I chose to leave space between each set of shelves, both on the sides and the top to account for any imperfections there may have been in my measuring. Additionally, if you leave space at the top between the shelves, it gives you a spot for the larger hotwheels that may not fit on the other shelves.

We drilled pilot holes on the shelves that would be on the top. Only one corner is shown in this photo, but we did all 4 corners as this pine is very soft and we were afraid of splitting.



Then we wood glued each corner for added security.



We chose to put 4 screws into each section and used 24, 2" screws.

After measuring and marking our spots, we began hanging the shelves-2 pieces deep. We did a screw in each corner and made our way up the wall.



And here's the finished product!

             

I am overall happy with the way this turned out. The shelves were far from perfect, mostly due to the poor quality of the pine and really could've used another coat of paint, but I wasn't willing to invest any additional time (or money into the project). My OCD and anxiety about having things perfect had to cool it on this project. I reminded myself many times that I did not have to look at this each day, so some imperfections were okay. It is serving an awesome purpose and my boys are happy! Win, win! Next up...storage for the mini figs using leftover pieces of this shoe rack.